This invention relates to the art of power driven brushes of the type generally employed as toothbrushes or the like.
A variety of such power driven brushes have been evolved with a view to implementing the facility with which teeth or the like may be brushed. Where such brushes are employed for dental hygiene, it is found that with the same expenditure of time, the average individual can attain greater thoroughness of brushing, and hopefully improved dental hygiene, as compared to that available with a manual brush. Further, by minimizing required physical exertion and time, and/or providing a relatively self-acting piece of equipment, it is hoped that the user will find the chore more palatable.
Though power driven toothbrushes employing either self-contained electric motors, or water driven turbines, have previously been employed, and though such previously evolved brushes appear to have greatly enhanced the facility with which an individual can care for his or her own teeth, these previously evolved brushes still do not serve to clean all of the complexly contoured surfaces of the conventional tooth, both because of the limited range of motion of the brush, and because of the contours of the brush, which do not always approximate the surfaces of the tooth to be cleaned.
Thus, prior art power driven toothbrushes have generally employed a motor containing handle coupled to a brush to either reciprocate it along a longitudinal linear path or transverse linear path. The user further compounds the locus of movement of the brush by manually manipulating the brush to augment the paths of movement provided by the motor drive, and though this complexity of movement does indeed significantly improve cleaning as compared to that with a conventional manual toothbrush, it is found that plaque and the like debris often remains on the tooth surface, primarily because of the lack of contact of the brush surfaces with the tooth surfaces.
Professional brushing equipment employed by dentists, dental hygienists, and the like, utilize rotary brushes of relatively small diameter, with the rotating brush subject to positioning in the various crevices of the teeth. Such rotary toothbrushes are not available to the average individual, and even if available, would not be usable, since the careful manipulation of the relatively small brush over the various surfaces of the tooth is not something which the average individual is capable of performing.